


boy trouble, we’ve got double

by katewonder



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Feelings, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Multi, Yuletide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 08:41:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8884363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katewonder/pseuds/katewonder
Summary: In the future, not too long from now, Conrad would go home and things would inevitably change but that’s what happened when you grew up, Millie felt. Things had to change or you would get terribly bored.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [laulan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/laulan/gifts).



Technically, this whole song and dance had started completely independently of Millie and she was a little bit annoyed that she had been dragged into it against her will. Well, not annoyed really but she did wish she had been there at the start and not come in towards the middle of the second act. Though, she supposed things probably would have moved faster if she had been there to bang Conrad and Christopher’s heads together the second they started being idiots.

If she banged their heads together every time they did something stupid, though, she would probably cost Christopher another one of his lives.

She had been at school when it started. Genevieve had handed her a very thick letter, addressed to her in Conrad’s handwriting and made some snide comment about Millie getting love letters and swanned off with her group of other awful girls.

 _Dearest Millie_ , Conrad had written. _It seems that I have fallen in love with Christopher. Which is ridiculous, because he loves you and he does not even know my name and I have to return home to Series Seven at the end of next year, or possibly the year after, so what is even the point of being in love with Christopher?_ That wasn’t overly the most surprising thing Millie had read. In the letter, Conrad spoke of all the obnoxious things that Christopher had done while she had been gone and how he had once thought it was all horrible and now was charmed by it, and honestly, Millie had been there herself. She understood. She wasn’t even angry that her best friend had fallen in love with her Christopher. There was enough of Christopher to go around, after all.

He was too irritating for one person to deal with alone, after all.

Millie wrote him back, told him she would be home for Christmas and to tell Christopher how he felt. And then she had mailed the letter and gone off to her magic class, and put all thoughts of the matter on hold because there wasn’t anything she could do about it from here. Outside of what she had just done, of course.

Honestly, she thought the situation would be at least partially resolved when she got home.

She was not terribly surprised to find that it wasn’t.

“They haven’t spoken to each other in a month,” Elizabeth said, helping Millie unpack her bags. “Christopher has been in the biggest sulk of his life and Conrad has just been quiet.”

Millie sighed. “I’ll straighten them out,” she said, and wondered whether Christopher would bend down for her to grab him by the ear or if she would have to get a box. “I feel like all I ever do is run damage control for Christopher.”

“You probably should get used to it,” Elizabeth said. “You’ll probably end up his wife and have to do it for the rest of your days.”

“That’s what Conrad is for,” Millie said, patting Elizabeth on the arm. “So I better get the two of them talking to each other again. There’s some chocolate in my book bag that I brought home for you.” She hugged her friend, stood up, straightened her skirts and went to find both of her idiot boys to sort them out.

\--

Conrad was always going to be the easiest one of them to find. He was in his bedroom reading one of his Peter Jenkins books, something he only did these days when he was upset. _Like slipping into a literary comfort novel_ , Millie supposed; she did the same with her Millie books sometimes. There were times you just needed to read something that had once made you very happy, that was something she understood completely. “You don’t even come and say hello when I come home?” she asked, leaning against his doorframe. He looked up at her and then all but threw himself off the bed and across the room at her. “What sort of a friend do you call yourself?”

“You’re home!” he said, hugging her close to him. He had gotten taller again. He needed to stop that if Christopher wasn’t going to stop it, it wasn’t fair the both of them being so much taller than she was. “Christopher’s been awful.”

“So I have been told,” Millie said. “Why don’t we sit down and you can tell me everything that happened between you writing me a letter and now. And then I will go and find Christopher and shout at him.”

“It’s not his fault,” Conrad said, and looked completely miserable.

“It’s always Christopher’s fault,” Millie said and moved to sit down on his bed. “Especially when you don’t think it is his fault. That’s how he gets you.”  

“I told him that I had feelings for him,” Conrad said, quietly, as if telling her a secret. But she already knew this secret, so she wasn’t sure why he was being so strange about it.

“And he doesn’t feel them in return?” Millie asked, reaching down to link his fingers with hers.

“No, he does,” Conrad said, and there was a flutter in Millie’s chest she didn’t completely understand. “But the problem is that he doesn’t want to do anything without you.”

 _What did that have to do with anything_ , Millie thought to herself. And then, _oh_! “Well then,” she said. “Would you be amenable to that?” Conrad was handsome enough, she supposed, even if she had never really thought of himself in that way it didn’t mean she couldn’t start thinking of him. Also, he was one of them, he belonged with them, she had always felt that. The three of them were better together, always had been, and probably always would be. And there were so many months that she wasn’t there, and soon there would be so many years that Conrad wouldn’t be. Perhaps it made sense that for the time they had left they could all just spend that time together.

It would also be very nice to have someone to manage Christopher with her, in an official way, because she had definitely been making Conrad deal with him already.

“I never… even considered,” Conrad said, looking at her like she was the sun. She had kind of missed people looking at her like that, a little bit, secretly. Missed the clout of being the Living Goddess Asheth. Especially when people were being awful to her at School.

“Well, think on it,” Millie said, and leant over and kissed his cheek very gently. “I’m going to go and talk to Christopher.”

\--

“Do I have to fix all of your problems for you?” Millie asked, coming into the office that Christopher had been given to work out of. They were giving him more to do now, slowly slowly slowly increasing his responsibilities to prepare him for the rest of his life. She wasn’t really sure whether or not he had noticed they were giving him more responsibilities, but at the same time she was pretty sure he hadn’t because he wasn’t complaining about how much he had to do.

Of course, at this particular time, he wasn’t even working, he had his feet propped up on the desk and was reading what looked to be some scandalous novel that Elizabeth had probably left somewhere.

“So, you spoke to Conrad then?” he asked, putting his book down without even marking the page. One he had read before, possibly. Or perhaps he had just been passing time until she came to find him. The second option was the more infuriating option, and so was probably the truth.

“He’s very upset,” Millie said.

“There’s no point,” Christopher said, which was fairly uncharacteristic of him. When had he ever done what was expected of him. “Also, I won’t do anything without you.”

“Is that all this is about?” she asked. “Because I love the both of you dearly and just want you to be happy. I will quite happily let the both of you buy me chocolates and presents and take turns holding my hand when we walk places. It feels like a win win situation for me.”

“It’s not the way things are done,” Christopher said, smiling at her in that awful vague way he had. “It’s not proper.”

Millie resisted the urge to roll her eyes. “So what?” she asked. “What do you care about proper? You’re going to be the Chrestomanci, it’s not like they can toss you aside for another nine lived enchanter. I’m fairly certain you can do whatever you please as long as you do it discreetly.” He stared at her like he hadn’t even considered that. She smiled victoriously, a little bit glad to have finally won a disagreement with him, even though this was only a small one.

“He’s just going to leave us,” Christopher said quietly, and at the heart of it, this was probably what Christopher was most upset about. “He wants to leave us.”

“He wants to go home, it isn’t about leaving us,” Millie said, gently. She walked over to the desk, knocked Christopher’s legs off it and leant against it. “You have to let him go home when it’s his time but that doesn’t mean that he’s going to be gone completely from our lives. You can visit him. We can visit him. He’ll be your representative for Series Seven, so unfortunately for him he’s stuck with you.”

Christopher looked up at her, a little awestruck, and she liked that expression on his face. Millie leant down and kissed Christopher very gently against the corner of his mouth. They had only done this a handful of times, never able to get enough privacy in this house full of people.

“I miss you when you’re not here,” Christopher said.

“Well, I am your voice of reason,” Millie said, laughing. “Even if I am cross with you a lot of the time. Now, please go and talk to Conrad. The poor creature is very sad.”

\--

She supposed that Conrad and Christopher had kissed and made up because when she saw them again after dinner, the two of them were looking much more happier with the state of their lives. She smiled at them, where they were sitting together on one of the sitting room couches, going over something Christopher had been given to read.

“You fixed their problem then,” Elizabeth asked, dealing Millie a fresh hand of cards.

“I suppose so,” she said, and after the next round that she won she would get up and go over to them, and convince the two of them to go for a walk with her so that together they could go over the finer details of this arrangement but for now she was just going to let them talk to each other.

In the future, not too long from now, Conrad would go home and things would inevitably change but that’s what happened when you grew up, Millie felt. Things had to change or you would get terribly bored.

For now though, things would be nice. Things would be the way she wanted them to be, even if it meant micromanaging both of the boys that she loved. She would go back to school, and they would be fine without her, but they would also be here when she came home for the holidays, just as they had always been. But in a nicer way, she supposed. And when Conrad had to leave, she would be there for Christopher.

No matter what the future was going to be like for them, it was going to be interesting and she couldn’t wait to find out what came next.

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Yuletide! I hope you like this. I started writing about ten different things before I settled on this because I wanted to write something EXCITING and PLOT FILLED but that's not something I particularly excel at finishing. I'm much more of a character study kind of person. 
> 
> I hope you enjoyed this, that it was something that you liked. Maybe one day I will finish the pretending to be married spy story I started and I can give that to you then. 
> 
> Merry Yuletide, laulan! I hope you have a fantastic holiday season.


End file.
